Behind the Story: Hidden SLO Kitchen is Making Detroit-Style Pizzas

I had heard of Benny’s Pizza and knew people who had tried it, but didn’t know much more than that. There’s a mysterious aspect to this pizza place that Sophia Crolla and I wanted to uncover. 

“My friends and I have seen people order from Benny but I was skeptical about messaging him on Facebook and then picking up a pizza,” Crolla said. “I wasn’t sure what I would be getting myself into.” 

I had been part of Benny’s Facebook group for months so I knew that he had a big following. I decided to reach out to him through Facebook and see if he could be willing to talk. I knew that he would be a great person to do a story on because he seemed very animated on the page. Customers post memes and photos, raving about the pizza and he often replies with funny remarks. 

He agreed to do the interview so Sophia and I rented camera equipment and came up with a variety of questions. At first, we wanted to come up with an angle for the story but then decided we would just ask a bunch of questions and see where the interview went. 

Upon arriving at the kitchen, Benny and one of his employees had already been there for three hours preparing dough for the day. We got to follow them around as they made the sauce, got the toppings ready, and went over the logistics for the afternoon/evening. The kitchen was busy with lots of commotion, music blasting from the speakers, and more employees coming in as it got closer to customer pick up times. 

“The energy in the kitchen was incredible,” Powers said. “The whole team is so passionate about what they’re doing and it shows in the pizza they make.”

Sophia had a DSLR camera and I was using my phone so we had a variety of footage. We asked Benny a handful of questions while he was making the food, but it wasn’t until his lunch break that we had a real interview. We chose to have a background of the kitchen during the interview and made sure we were far away when he took his mask off to start talking. 

Because his lunch break was only 30 minutes, we had to be sure that our interview questions were completely ready. Benny had 10 minutes to speak with us before he had to get back to preparing the pizzas. 

After the interview, we stayed to get some footage of customers picking up their pizzas and happened to speak with a person named Marc Carra. He was so excited about the food and brought an RV to enjoy his pizza in. Benny also gave us a pizza and Marc invited us into his RV to eat with him. We got some great footage and it was nice to speak with someone who was so passionate about Benny’s Kitchen. 

After looking through footage and transcribing the interview, Sophia and I realized that the customers are what makes this business so special. We initially wanted to make this story a Q&A, but then decided to go with a feature in order to include the words of customers and for readers to get a feel of the atmosphere in the kitchen. For our interactive component, we decided to create a clip of the customers replying to one of Benny’s Facebook posts and created a video as well. On Instagram, we will post a photo of Benny making pizzas, as well as an IGTV video. On Twitter, we will post the video we created, as well as a tweet linking to the article.